Civil War Memory

Jill Lepore on the Connection Between War and Narrative

Something I've been thinking about:

"Words about war are often lies.  False reports, rumors, deceptions.  One nation's propaganda may be its enemy's profanity: truth in war is relative (which is not to say that some kinds of killing aren't worse than others).

"To say that war cultivates language is not to ignore what else war does: war kills.  Indeed, it is the central claim of this book that wounds and words--the injuries and their interpretation--cannot be separated, that acts of war generate acts of narration, and that both types of acts are often joined in a common purpose: defining the geographical, political, cultural, and sometimes racial and national boundaries between peoples."

From The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity (Knopf, 1998)

No Cellular Tower at Antietam or Why Gettysburg is not Sacred Ground

The Civil War Preservation Trust has recently released their top 10 most endangered list and it includes Antietam, in part, because of a proposed cellular phone tower that may go up just south of the battlefield.  I sincerely hope that this does not happen, although I have no ill-feelings towards the company responsible for such an eye sore.  After all the residents of Sharpsburg weren't engaged in battlefield preservation following the war.  I love visiting Antietam.  It was where I was introduced to the Civil War in 1994 and it is one of the few battlefields where I can walk and actually contemplate the bravery of the men who fought there as well as the broader meanings of the war.  This spring I will have the opportunity to bring around 15 students to the battlefield as part of a 2-day bike tour.  In short, for me Antietam is the closest thing to "sacred ground."

I have never felt the same about Gettysburg.  Although I was against the push to bring a casino to Gettysburg I never viewed it as a moral question, and when the observation tower came down I never thought of it as bringing us a step closer to some notion of battlefield purity.  And I am probably one of the few who would hate to see the Cyclorama Center torn down.  Whenever I travel to Gettysburg (it's not that often) I find it close to impossible to think about the battle itself apart from the distractions of the town and the ways in which the battlefield was utilized following the war.  I guess too much has happened to simply see it as a battlefield where men fought and died.  Yes, you can find a battle at Gettysburg and much to contemplate, but you can just as easily find overweight white male reenactors, white tourists, ghosts [I assume most of them are white.], cheap hotels, and trinkets galore.  Please don't blame me for holding such a view as Americans made the decision to commercialize and sell it long ago.   

Rally on the High Ground and keep the cell phone tower away from Antietam.

Do We Really Need to Save Fredericksburg's Slaughter Pen?

Well, I guess we do, but now that I have your attention let me share with you what is included in the Civil War Preservation Trust's latest mailing.  (1) notice indicating the availability of CWPT's financial reports; (2) glossy sheet advertising a Jeff Shaara book or windbreaker as a free gift for donation; (3) typed letter by Jeff Shaara addressed to, "Dear Fellow History Buff"; (4) interview with Jim Lighthizer and on reverse side words of praise for CWPT by well-regarded historians; (5) full-length sheet with breakdown for donation: donate $500 for Cannoneer Membership Level, $35 for Bugler Membership Level, etc.; (6) 2-page generalized letter about the CWPT and the need to save battlefields; (7) detailed tactical map of the battle of Fredericksburg with color image and photograph on reverse side and (8) business reply mail envelope.

I've given to the CWPT before, but given my salary as a high school teacher I can't take part every year and I definitely cannot contribute to additional mailings throughout the year.  I would love to know how much money is wasted on these mailings.  Email would be a more efficient means of communication, but my guess is that the good people at CWPT are operating on the assumption that a hard copy is more likely to lead to a contribution.  Let's assume that is true; do they still have to include everything mentioned above?  What exactly am I missing in all of this.  Keep in mind that I receive such mailings at least 4 times a year. 

Isn't it possible that the Slaughter Pen could already be saved if they scaled back on these bulky mailings?

I know this is probably a write-off for the CWPT - which reminds me of a Seinfeld episode:

Kramer : It's just a write off for them.
Jerry : How is it a write off?
Kramer : They just write it off.
Jerry : Write it off what?
Kramer : Jerry all these big companies they write off everything
Jerry : You don't even know what a write off is.
Kramer : Do you?
Jerry : No. I don't.
Kramer : But they do and they are the ones writing it off.
Jerry : I wish I just had the last twenty seconds of my life back.

Let the Festivities Commence: Antietam's 145th

Thank you God for roughly 23,000 casualties, for Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, James Longstreet, and George McClellan.  Thank you for the Dunker Church, the Cornfield, Bloody Lane, and Burnside's Bridge.  Thank you for Lee's steadfastness and McClellan's bungling.  Thank you for: "If Lee's line was penetrated at any point the entire army would have collapsed" and "Perhaps McClellan could have seized the day if his attacks were better coordinated or used his reserves."

I hope everyone has a fun day.

Battlefield Hike

Yesterday Michaela and I drove down to the Cold Harbor-Gaines's Mill battlefields for a little hike.  Some of you may find this surprising, but I've never been there before.  It was a nice day so it seemed like the right thing to do.  We walked along the trails for the 1864 battle of Cold Harbor and followed the signs over at Gaines's Mill for the 1862 battle.  I don't spend time obsessing over troops movements or try to find the exact positions of various units.  As long as I have a general sense of what I am looking at than all is well.  I have to admit that I was very impressed with the earthworks at Cold Harbor.  Some of them are quite well preserved and if you exercise a little imagination you can almost see the men in their positions.  I took a bunch of photographs which you can check out over at my flickr page.  Unfortunately some of them didn't turn out well.

Speaking of earthworks I just received my advanced copy of Earl J. Hess's Trench Warfare Under Grand & Lee: Field Fortifications in the Overland Campaign (UNC Press, 2007).  I assume it's as good as the first volume.  A few summers ago I collected a great deal of archival material for Hess, most of which I assume will be utilized for the third and final volume in this series.  The notice has a September 24 release date, but UNC Press usually releases before so keep an eye out. 

New Issue of Civil War History

The latest issue of the journal Civil War History arrived yesterday and includes the participants of the 2005 Society of Civil War Historians panel at the Southern Historical Association.  The panel, which was made up of Ken Noe, George Rable, and Carol Reardon, explored the process and challenges of writing military history.  I am making my way through it and will no doubt be the subject of future posts.  The only full-length article is by M. Keith Harris, titled "Slavery Emancipation, and Veterans of the Union Cause: Commemorating Freedom in the Era of Reconciliation, 1885-1915."  Keith is a graduate student at the University of Virginia and this article is drawn from his dissertation.

Another Look at "Pickett's Charge"

Yesterday fellow blogger Craig Warren posted an anonymous poem about Pickett's Charge over at Civil War Literature.  I inquired as to the author and today Craig revealed that he is in fact the masked poet.  Here it is:

“WHAT IF?”

What if at Gettysburg the troops of Pickett and Pettigrew and Trimble
were already the bronze and marble men
who later gazed northward above green courthouse lawns?

Would Yankee tenacity stop the advancing rows of
stone and metal stalwarts?

Or would the Union ranks break in blue waves
before those defiant, sculpted expressions of the Lost Cause?

– Craig A. Warren

I just the love the way Craig turns the tables on our traditional understanding of the battle.  This is the "high water-mark" of the Confederacy and everything supposedly hinges on the decisions being made in Lee's camp.  Confederates are typically understood as the actors while the Federals aligned along Cemetery Ridge, etc. tend to react.  The popularity and pervasiveness of the Lost Cause continues to fuel a cottage industry of books purporting to tell us where it all went wrong for Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia.  Where is the Lost Cause equivalent that explains or celebrates the stand of the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg?  Even George Pickett understood that the Federals had something to do with their defeat.

Thanks and well done Craig.

Looking Beyond the "Rally on the High Ground" Initiative

Much of my research and commentary on the evolution of battlefield interpretation within the National Park Service has referenced the 2000 Rally on the High Ground Conference as a watershed moment.  Without being too overly simplistic the working assumption has been that the most significant changes to NPS interpretation has been in reaction to Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr's. legislation and accompanying symposium which brought together NPS staff and academic historians in Washington D.C. The conference examined ways in which the NPS could implement Jackson Jr.'s legislation which called for the broadening of battlefield interpretation to include the cause of the war, the role of slavery during the war, as well as other topics.  This push for a broader interpretive context as well as Jackson Jr.'s involvement has been met with suspicion by segments of the general public who tend to view his involvement as political which in turn has colored the NPS's subsequent actions as overtly political.

My conversations with NPS staff has given me a more rounded picture of the evolution of battlefield interpretation within recent decades and the place of the "Rally Initiative" within that story.  It needs to be understood that both Jackson Jr.'s legislation and the D.C. conference did not introduce recent interpretive trends to the NPS.  It did, however, introduced the issue to the general public - often in ways that proved to be divisive.  After all, Jackson Jr.'s legislation also touched on the controversial question of slave reparations.  It could be argued that such a high-profile personality, along with the sensitive topics of the cause of the war and slavery caused more harm than good.  I think it is possible, however, to separate the question of battlefield interpretation from Jackson Jr.'s motivation.  Suspicion of the latter does not necessarily render the former otiose.  I for one am impressed by Jackson Jr.'s passion for Civil War history.  He has visited just about every Civil War battlefield and he has read widely on the subject - which is more than most of his detractors can claim.

Expanding Our View

Today I spent a few hours in Fredericksburg interviewing National Park Service historian John Hennessy for my Crater project.  We discussed the challenges and opportunities involved in the revision and expansion of battlefield interpretation and its place within the history of Civil War memory. 

On the way to the meeting I decided to take a few minutes to photograph the area around Hazel Grove and Fairview on the Chancellorsville Battlefield.  If you haven't visited the battlefield in recent years you are in for a real treat as the NPS has cut a large number of trees at Fairview to bring it more closely in line with what it would have looked like in May 1863.  Unfortunately, this ground is often missed by tourists since the tendency is to concentrate on "Stonewall" Jackson's role in the campaign which ended on the evening of May 2.  The fighting on May 3, however, constitutes some of the bloodiest fighting of the entire war. 

Description of photographs is as follows: At the top-left are two photographs from Hazel Grove looking towards Fairview.  The second pair were taken at Fairview, the first looking back towards Hazel Grove and the second of Union guns in the positions they would have been in on May 3.  The final pair were taken at the Chancellor House and represent some of the changes in interpretation currently underway at various Civil War sites.  These are wayside exhibits that depict both the civilian experience and slave life at the Chancellor House.  Yes, it is difficult to believe that there are people who find this kind of interpretation to be problematic.  As I indicated a few months back when I tried to explain this to my Civil War class during a visit to the battlefield they simply stared back in disbelief.

Jesse Jackson Jr.'s Civil War: Part 2

Last year I blogged about Jesse Jackson Jr.'s opening remarks at the NPS's "Rally on the High Ground" conference which took place back in 2000.  The conference resulted in a book that included the various presentations.  I spent last night rereading Congressman Jackson's remarks and this morning I emailed his office to see about conducting an interview as part of a final chapter for the Crater manuscript which I discussed yesterday.  I've already been in touch with a number of people; all have been supportive and are willing to sit down for interviews.  One individual that I talked to yesterday described interest in the Civil War and the NPS within the black community of Petersburg as one of "apathy" as opposed to the city of Richmond.  If this is true I want to better understand why this is the case.  I suspect that much of what needs to be explained will be done by looking closely at the recent history of the city of Petersburg. 

Following Congressman Jackson's remarks is a question and answer section.  I found one particular question and response to be quite intriguing.  The questioner was apparently with the NPS and asked Jackson what made him qualified to "impose" his views of the Civil War on the NPS given that he admitted to having no experience in historical interpretation and had only come to an interest in the Civil War four years previous. 

Answer: I don't quite see my views as an imposition on the National Park Service, but consistent with what one of the directors of one of the sites shared with me--the will of the people, an act of Congress.  So now that we have an act of Congress, that is the will of the people.  At one level or another, the will of the people is at the site to interpret its broader implications and put it in historical context.  That is much broader than left and right obliques.  An act of Congress created the Department of the Interior and an act of Congress created the National Park Service.  Furthermore, an act of Congress created your job and an act of Congress decided that local as well as state municipalities would not encroach upon this space because an act of Congress determined this space to be sacred.  So, acts of Congress, long before I got to Congress, created these sites and made determinations about how these sites would be shaped to keep local governments and state governments from encroaching upon these sites.  Acts of Congress also are responsible in one way or another for the interpretation.

I've blogged quite a bit about the supposed tension between the NPS and Southern heritage groups as a result of Jackson's legislation.  I may, however, have exaggerated the extent of the disagreements.  In a phone conversation the other day with a NPS historian he suggested that problems arise only when the question is debated abstractly.  This individual said that there are very few complaints about some of the changes that can currently be seen at NPS battlefields.  And why is that?  I suspect that there are few complaints because most people who visit battlefields don't know to complain.  They are looking for a solid interpretation that helps them understand what happened on a particular battlefield and how that site fits into a larger context. 

By the way in browsing Congressman Jackson's website I came across a list of books that cover the Civil War, slavery, Lincoln, and race.  He describes the list as follows: "Books that have greatly influenced the decisions and arguments I make on behalf of the people of the Second District of Illinois." I have to admit to being quite impressed with the range of books cited.